Big update to new.space for web

We made some changes that level up new.space

If you’ve used new.space in the last week, you may have noticed that some of the UI has been changed and some things look a little different. In this post, I’m excited to show you a few of those changes and tell you about the motivations behind them. There is also a secret tip at the end for how to get the new.space experience installed on Android, Mac, and Windows. Let’s get into it.

The New Design

The new design is, at its core, the exact same experience you’ve used in the past, with some important refinements. The first thing to note, is that the header area separator has been removed and the action bar has been moved to the top. This change makes it easier to see your content by removing some visual clutter. Also, we've tuned the padding and margins to more efficiently use space. I’ll get into some motivation for these changes a bit below, but here is a gif that shows the difference:

In addition to the reworked header, the full screen view now also has some improved UI. You will now see a breadcrumb navigation instead of an X button when navigating between the detail view and grid view.

The Concept

The first big motivation for making a lot of these changes is the arrival of accounts for new.space on the web. By adding the sidebar, the balance of the whole header area felt out of place and a bit busy. Also, the top left area was often conflicting with a close button. By restructuring all these elements, everything elegantly fits together, while still preserving the clean layout that has always made new.space so great.

Taking it further

There is a second motivation for this design refresh, and that is that it looks much better in an application window. What do I mean by that? Well, there is a pretty neat way to use new.space that has quickly become my favorite, and that is to install it.

Lookin’ good

If you are in Chrome or Edge, simply install the app and it will open in a separate application frame. I’ve found, more often than not, to be disappointed by web apps that claim this capability. However, our team has spent a lot of time working with and thinking about PWAs, or progressive web apps (the way of building an web app that allows one to be installed like this), we even created a web resource to help other people build them.

We are still developing this capability, and planning to add features like push notifications to the experience. Give it a spin on any Mac, Windows or Android device and let us know what you think of it.

Thanks for reading, and as always if there are any ideas you have or issues you encounter please let us know! Till next time, happy sharing!